On 08/09/2018 03:11 PM, Matt Garman wrote: > I use the IBM ServeRAID M1015 cards. These are PCIe gen2 x8 cards > that have two SAS2 ports (you can use SAS to 4x SATA breakout cables > for eight total SATA connections). These are re-branded LSI 9220-8i > cards. I haven't bought one in a long time, but they used to be cheap > and plentiful on ebay. But the LSI SAS2008 chip has been around for a > long time, has stable Linux drives, and good community support: > https://www.servethehome.com/ibm-m1015-part-1-started-lsi-92208i/ +1 On anything containing an LSI SAS chipset. I like putting the "IT" firmware (non-raid) on them for faster boot with MD raid. I have a SAS2008 (v2.0 x4) in my home media server, and a SAS3008 in my office server. While these have more backplane bandwidth than the sum of their drive connections, that isn't generally true for anything with an PCIe x1 connector. Usually not a problem with spinning rust. Mobo SATA ports are usually connected directly to the Southbridge, making them peers of all of the PCIe slots in the box. This is typically obvious in lspci. My lsdrv[1] utility will show you which root device the different disks are running under. Try to put all of your SSDs on mobo ports. Phil [1] https://github.com/pturmel/lsdrv
